Publications by Type: Journal Article

Human trafficking –  defined as organ and sex trafficking, and slavery materialized through numerous stratagems – is a growing problem worldwide. There has been a rising interest in the topic of human trafficking, and its mounting complexity and challenge. However, research has scarcely included literary representations of human trafficking achieved via e-surveillance processes: in this respect, Asian plays have received no sufficient critical attention. This article aims to redress this dearth by investigating the processes of human trafficking as depicted in the Indian playwright Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest, which premiered in 1999 in Greece. The play, a literary testimony to the complexity and subtlety of human trafficking processes, features storylines about human trafficking exercised through the forms of coercion, abduction, sexual seduction, fraud, deception, and abuse of power. Therefore, Harvest is closely read through Fanon’s, Foucault’s, and Bauman and Lyon’s perspectives of surveillance in this article. Reading the play provides a point of discussion of the third world’s vulnerability and its resistance to the first world’s human trafficking. It sheds much light on diverse human harvesting means such as organ harvesting and repopulation, and miscegenation, utilized through e-surveillance. The article offers complex insights into human trafficking victims of surveillance – both their vulnerability and the attempts of their agency.

Characterized by specific and rigid boundaries of institutional practices and expectations in the academy, student writing is a synergistic literacy practice where students are required to construct generically diverse texts by yoking concepts with appropriate linguistic resources. This empirical study involving 196 first-year ESL students at a university in Sri Lanka explores why conceptual incongruities occur in argumentative essays constructed by them, and how they defend their arguments. We analyzed all their timed essays and noticed that 72 out of them contained conceptual incongruities. By “conceptual incongruities, we refer to instances where students” conceptualization process is not aligned or coherent with the essay topic. For our analysis of student texts, we have introduced two social cognitive perspectives: untutored competencies and tutored competencies. The former includes inherited, social, and ideological identities emerging from societal epistemologies whereas disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity constitute the latter. This empirical research demonstrates how students’ conceptualization process is mediated by a labyrinthine repertoire of knowledge premised in students’ untutored competencies and tutored competencies, signaling deviations from their essay topic.

The proper management of municipal solid waste for the reduction of its potential impacts on the environment is one of the most challenging issues faced by the world. In this study, a comprehensive characterization of leachate and groundwater was carried out surrounding the Oum Azza sanitary landfill in Morocco to assess their potential risks to human health. The groundwater quality was analysed using quality indices and chemometric expertise. For this purpose, spatiotemporal variation of sixteen (16) physico-chemical parameters and nine (9) heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Ni, Cu, Cr, Hg, Ni, Zn, and Fe) in groundwater and leachate were studied. Experimental data showed elevated leachate contamination potential (LPI = 29.14) surpassed the permissible limits for discharge of leachate. Besides, the application of WQI (27.47–214.58), Nemerow index (0.72–6.17), irrigation quality indices (SAR, MHR, %Na, KI, and PI), and spatial distribution revealed the unsuitability of most of the groundwater samples in vicinity of the landfill area for drinking and irrigation purposes. However, the carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks are still within acceptable limits for residential receptors. The multivariate statistical (PCA and HCA) analysis suggested that the deterioration of groundwater quality was mainly originated from anthropogenic sources related to landfill leachate. This study proved an alarming threat of the groundwater in vicinity of the sanitary landfills due to leachate pollution. It is important to note that despite the fact that the landfill is a sanitary landfill and provided with liners, leachate contamination potential is inevitable. Thus, it is important to continuously monitor the groundwater quality surrounding the landfill. The study also recommended emphasizing on the status and conditions of geomembrane used in the landfill liner systems to prevent leachate percolation into the groundwater.

Iron is one of the most microbiologically and chemically important metals in natural waters. The biogeochemical cycling of iron is significantly influenced by the redox cycling of Fe(II) and Fe(III). Because of the unique chemistry of iron, it is often needed to analyze iron at nano-molar concentrations. This article describes a reverse flow injection analysis (rFIA) based method with ferrozine spectrophotometric detection to quantify total iron concentration in stream water at nanomolar concentrations. The rFIA system has a 0.65 nM detection limit and a linear dynamic range up to 1.40 μM for the total iron analysis. The detection limit was achieved using a 1.0 m long liquid waveguide capillary flow cell, 1.50 m long knotted reaction coil, 87.50 μL injection loop and a miniature fiber optics spectrophotometer. The optimized colorimetric reagent has 1.0 mM ferrozine, 0.1 M ascorbic acid, 1.0 mM citric acid and 0.10 M acetate buffer adjusted to pH 4.0. The best sample flow rate is 2.1 mL min−1 providing a sample throughput of more than 15 samples h−1. The linear dynamic range of the method can be adjusted by changing the volume of the injection loop. The rFIA manifold was assembled exclusively from commercially available components.

Timber is widely used as a structural material in residential house construction. Among them, the roof is the most crucial part of a house that covers the interior of a building. The Western Province has the highest number of residential houses in Sri Lanka. Approximately 22,414 homes are built in the Western Province within a year, and various roof designs can be identified under different complexity categories. This study aimed to identify and categorize major roof types in Western Province houses based on their design complexity. For this study, 30 house plans were collected fromColombo, Kaluthara, and Gampaha districts (a total of 90 house plans) from the house owners, architects, and draftsmen as softcopies and hard copies. Collected 90 house plans were visually analyzed to identify their basic roof types. Then the roof design complexity was analyzed based on the number of basic roof types presented in each house plan. Five basic roof types (Gable roof, Hip roof, One side hip roof, Lean-on roof or Shed roof, and Pyramid roof) and 23 roof designs were identified in the Western Province houses of Sri Lanka. 75.5% of selected house plans had a Gable roof as the primary roof type. The simple-level roof design was the most abundant in Kaluthara andGampaha districts with 40% and 43.33%, respectively. However, moderate-level complexity roof design was the most abundant type in the Colombo District with 46.66%. Only 3.33% of complex level roofs were found in the Kaluthara District, while Gampaha and Colombo districts had 6.66%and 10% complex roofs. As per the final result the complexity of roofs increases from Kaluthara, Gampaha, and Colombo districts, which may be attributed to the economic levels of house owners.Out of the 90 house plans in the Western Province houses, 38% of roof designs had the simple-level of complexity. 34%, 21%, and 7% of house roofs had moderate, very simple, and complex-level categories, respectively. Roof design directly relates to the house owner’s perception. However, roofdesigners can recommend simple roof designs for their clients to enhance the structural accuracy and the cost-effectiveness of a residential house roof. Keywords: Roof design, Complexity, House plans, Western province

The escalating loads of municipal solid waste (MSW) end up in open dumps and landfills, producing continuous flows of landfill leachate. The risk of incorporating highly toxic landfill leachate into environment is important to be evaluated and measured in order to facilitate decision making for landfill leachate management and treatment. Leachate pollution index (LPI) provides quantitative measures of the potential environmental pollution by landfill leachate and information about the environmental quality adjacent to a particular landfill. According to LPI values, most developing countries show high pollution potentials from leachate, mainly due to high organic waste composition and low level of waste management techniques. A special focus on leachate characterization studies with LPI and its integration to treatment, which has not been focused in previous reviews on landfill leachate, is given here. Further, the current review provides a summary related to leachate generation, composition, characterization, risk assessment and treatment together with challenges and perspectives in the sector with its focus to developing nations. Potential commercial and industrial applications of landfill leachate is discussed in the study to provide insights into its sustainable management which is original for the study.

The discussion on the dynamic assessment (DA) - a combination of assessment and instruction - and regulatory scales from implicit to explicit corrective feedback (CF) is relatively new in the CALL context. Applying the notions of Sociocultural Theory, Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Mediation, the present study examines how a DA-based regulatory scale from implicit to explicit CF could be designed to promote language learning in the text chat environment. This was done in collaboration with teachers. Four English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers and eight ESL students participated in the study. Using the methodology of design-based research (DBR), the study was conducted mainly in three stages: exploratory stage, first intervention, and second intervention. This study drew on various data. Naturally occurring interaction data such as teachers’ oral conversation transcripts and text chat transcripts were analysed using conversation analysis, while the teachers’ interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Thus, employing DBR, the present study introduces a three-step regulatory scale that could promote learning in the text chat environment. The findings suggest that the three-step regulatory scale could be used by teachers to identify the learner’s potential and assist them in partial or complete self-regulation. The study will introduce a DA-based regulatory scale to promote language learning in the text chat environment and contribute to the knowledge of DA, ZPD and mediation in the CALL context.

Code-switching–extrasentential shifts transferring the focus from one language to another–is undoubtedly a characteristic of cross-cultural encounter: it is generally assumed in the literature that bilinguals mix their two languages to considerable degrees. Code-switching in its oral production has largely been researched, devoting attention to its grammatical patterns, structure and meaning, and the like. Nevertheless, very little research focuses on code-switching in writing, particularly on Sinhala-English shifts in written e-communication methods. The overall intent of this study was to examine the use of code-switching in emails employed by Sinhala and English bilinguals. The fourfold question aimed (i) to explore the frequency of code-switching in emails among bilinguals of English and Sinhala languages,(ii) to investigate the possible relation between code-switching and email recipients,(iii) to determine the possible correlation between code-switching and the subject matter in emails, and (iv) to explore the reasons and functions for code-switching in such emails. A questionnaire, a semi-structured interview, and a collection of emails were employed as research instruments in this exploratory study. Over 100 Sinhala-English bilinguals contributed to the questionnaire: while 20 of their emails were analyzed to triangulate the data, and 5 participants were interviewed to ascertain further the data collected. Data analysis was performed both on a statistical test called a Chi-squire test and an evaluation of the content of emails. Evidently, code-switching is highly frequent, and preferred to a single language, in informal emails. It entails diverse socio …

Defined as ‘networks of learning relationships among students and significant others’, peer assisted learning takes a bewildering array of forms in higher education. A useful way to conceptualise these is to draw from ideas of communities of practice and communicative rationality, with the degree of student autonomy a third key element. We illustrate this approach with a study of Kuppi, an example of peer assisted learning initiated and organised entirely by students. We interviewed undergraduate participants from six state universities in Sri Lanka and found strong support for this model of peer assisted learning from student learners and student tutors. These classes are characterised by informality and discussion, flexibility in timing and location and a focus on assessments. Students determine the content and who teaches, whilst tutors give their time without payment, out of fraternity and to improve their own learning and skills. The theory of communicative rationality helped explain much of the attraction of this form of peer assisted learning. There was evidence for a strong community of practice; however apart from peer tutors aspiring to become academics, this involved mostly reinforcement of student identity rather than transformation into emerging roles. The high levels of engagement and student autonomy shown by Kuppi challenge suggestions that peer assisted learning must be organised by tutors if it is to be effective.